Valentine's Day is a day for extravagant gestures of love. But not just to your significant other or partner—let's spread that love to everyone who needs it right now. Starting with one splashy, shiny, colorful cake that's just the right amount of ridiculous to make everyone smile.

If you spend any time looking at cakes on Pinterest, you've seen a few mirror cakes recently. Some of them look so insane you probably think you'd never be able to make something like that at home. Or at least that's what I thought. But then I tried the technique, and though my mirror cakes didn't have quite the same cutting-edge look as some of those photos, they were still more impressive than anything I ever thought I'd be able to make on my own. And making a giant heart-shaped version for Valentine's Day really shows the love.

Start with a simple, crowd-pleasing chocolate cake

Everyone likes chocolate cake—especially one you can make in one bowl. This recipe feeds at least 15 people, and is usually baked in a standard 9x13" baking dish. To make a heart-shaped cake, divide the batter between one 8" round and one 8" square before baking (When you split the batter between two pans, it'll bake up faster, too, so start testing for doneness after 25 minutes instead of 35.)

Once your cakes have been baked and cooled on wire racks, turn them out onto a parchment-lined cutting board or clean work surface and trim the domed tops off so they're nice and flat. Slice the round one in half so you have two half-circles and place each half-circle on each of two adjacent sides of your square to form a heart! You'll need something to keep your heart stable as you decorate it, so use a pencil to trace out the heart shape on the parchment paper, then transfer the cakes back to the wire rack. Use the traced parchment as a template to cut out a cardboard heart the same size as your cake, then wrap it in foil so it's food safe and slide your cake carefully onto it.

Assemble your heart with cream cheese frosting

You can, of course, use any kind of frosting you like—it just needs to be white—but I like the tanginess of cream-cheese frosting best. Dab a little bit of this cream-cheese frosting in the center of your cardboard base, then place the square-shaped cake on the base. Next, frost the cut sides of the round cake halves so they stick securely to the two sides of the square. Then cover the whole cake in a thin layer of frosting (this is called the "crumb coat"), making sure not to get any crumbs into your clean white bowl of frosting. Don't worry if the crumb coat has lots of crumbs in it, though! Pop the whole cake in the fridge if you can (or outside in the garage or on the porch or somewhere safe and chilly) and let it chill for about an hour. Then cover it all in a final thick layer of frosting, using an offset spatula to make the surface as flat and smooth as you possibly can. Now stick it in the fridge (or that safe chilly place) and let it chill for at least an hour or overnight.

Make it shine with a white chocolate glaze in several shades of pink

The ingredient that gives mirror cakes their glossy shine is gelatin. There are some complicated ways to transform plain, unflavored powdered gelatin into a glaze, but I'm keeping it simple with ingredients you already probably have in your baking pantry: White chocolate chips, sweetened condensed milk, sugar, and vanilla extract. When melted all together, they create a creamy, sweet glaze that sets over a chilled cake with a mirror-like sheen. It almost feels like magic. Before pouring it over your cake, divide the glaze into three bowls and tint each of them a different shade of pink (or whatever colors of the rainbow you want to display your Valentine's Day love). To create the marbled effect, just pour those colors back into one bowl, pouring each into the center of the one before so you have concentric circles of color. Then you're ready to pour that multi-colored bowl of glaze over the cake in back-and-forth sweeping motions, creating a dreamy psychedelic pattern. You might find it hard to hold in a squeal of glee when you see this actually work. Just let the glaze set for an hour in the fridge, and soon your Valentine will be just as amazed as you are.